CRACK MURDER: A DETECTIVE STORY

Published: February 15, 1987

(Page 5 of 9)

This is unlike any of the previous apartments we've visited on this case. Most of them have been more or less brave struggles to maintain some semblance of civility against the seemingly inexorable deterioration that afflicts these poverty and crack-stricken neighborhoods. But this one is different, this is the luxe life that crack-dealing profits can buy, for a brief time at least. The floors are carpeted wall to wall in rich chocolate brown. There's an expensive stack-type tape deck and sound system and a fairly plush set of matching sofa and chairs. Still displayed on the wall are the deceased's psychology certificates.

In the living room, as Donna gets her kids groomed and dressed up for the wake, the detectives are skillfully orchestrating a low-key but purposive exchange of rumor, gossip and hearsay with Donna, a female relative and the cousin. They're just as curious about what the cops have heard as the cops are about what they've heard. But, as it turns out, most of what everyone has heard seems to be secondhand. One name keeps emerging in the discussion as a source of all the hearsay. ''Roy's been saying that,'' ''I heard that from Roy.'' ''That's what I hear he told Roy.'' This Roy, an associate of Halfback, seems to have been everywhere, conducting a kind of personal investigation of the death of his friend, talking to everyone except the detectives. They have a description of him, they've been looking for him, but so far he's eluded them.

Donna's two children are dressed now in what look to be expensive little matching outfits. She helps them into their well-cut matching overcoats. It's possible to see the trade-off she's made in life from the way she pampers her kids with fine clothes and constant attentiveness. Before she met Halfback, as an unwed mother of two on public assistance, she could see the grim future her kids faced every day on the streets around her. Her liaison with a powerful crack tycoon was a way of providing them with a comfortable home, good clothes, insulation from the abyss outside. But it was a precarious kind of protection, founded on the profits of a trade that was digging the abyss even deeper. It's left her exposed to a dangerous situation, her security and prosperity disintegrating rapidly, her kids exposed, not only to poverty, but to danger from her deceased boyfriend's enemies. And ''friends.''

In dealing with the detectives it's clear she's still holding something back. She is still divided between her allegiance to the code of silence that rules the world of her deceased boyfriend, and her desire to find some new source of protection for herself and her children. The detectives play upon this. Before we set out for the wake, each of them takes her aside for a serious, one-on-one talk about her future, her plans - talks designed to build the trust that will be a bridge from Halfback's world to theirs.

AT THE WAKE: THE funeral home people have done a superb job of reconstructing Halfback's face. They've situated the coffin on a raised platform at one end of the viewing room and laid out the body in such a way that the left side of his head, the side that took the bullets, is not visible.

Seeing him like that, with the damage concealed, his powerfully built body attired in a lustrous blue suit, an expression of great seriousness of purpose on his face, it's possible to understand the charisma he was said to have projected when he was alive. At a low rail in front of the coffin, three teen-age girls are holding on to each other, intermittently breaking into collective fits of sobbing. Other mourners stand and gaze respectfully at the dead crack tycoon.

In the reception hall outside the viewing room, a larger crowd mills about, chattering nervously, gazing curiously at the two detectives who are escorting Donna and her children into the viewing room. Leaving them there to make their peace with the body, Cachie and Gregori circulate through the crowd, speaking casually with those they recognize from previous interviews.

Cachie points out a couple of teen-age boys mingling with the crowd who are conspicuous because they're wearing prominently displayed beepers on their belts.

''Crack runners,'' he says, ''All the big operations use those beepers.'' It's not clear, he says, whether these runners are still functioning remnants of Halfback's crew or observers from rival operations. The mood in the reception room is tense. Although the promised violence has not materialized, many people are aware of the threats; they're reluctant to talk.

But later, after we drop Donna off and head over to the crack location, Gregori reveals that she has ''given up'' something that night, at the wake: Halfback's gun. It had been hidden in the apartment, she'd told him. After the shooting she'd given it to a friend for safekeeping. She promised tonight she'll try to get it back and give it to the detectives. This is a breakthrough, because, not only is it possible the gun will tie Halfback to other unsolved shootings, but also, by giving up the gun to them, Donna has given them a symbolic token that their patient courtship of her has begun to bear fruit.